What Am I Reading?

Lots of books. The one that I am most fascinated by is Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. There are many reasons. The most important one is that Harari is so definite about everything that he writes. The counterargument is something to which he pays very little attention. Engaging counterarguments is a primary weakness in the papers that my students write. I take points off their papers for the absence of same.

It is lovely and wonderful to see that someone has written an entire book in which his very definite-ness – if that is a word – is the most fascinating part of the book. Confidence? Hubris? Knowledge? All of the above? This is a book that I pick up in the morning and read one chapter at a time. It is taking me months to finish because some mornings I don’t read. Some mornings all the details are just too much to entertain so early in the day.

Still Waters by Viveca Sten. There is something about Nordic culture that is so foreign to me, I am attracted to it. Maybe it is the fact that there is so little sun there. That has got to affect the psyche of the people who live there, yeah? I mean, consider how open and happy people are who are born and raised in California.

Okay. I don’t know that for a fact. It is a mythology that I am willing to believe. Just as I am willing to believe – based on the fact that so many of them are in the United States – that Nordic culture is gloomily homogeneous – because there is so little sun.

The setting of Still Waters is an island during the summer – Sandhamm – three bodies so far, all connected. We don’t yet know how. I can’t wait to find out. I am reading this one on Kindle. I am 45% into the book according to my reader. Page 202. There is something about knowing how far into the book that I am which I like. I am not yet half-way through. The police don’t have a clue. Unlike Harari, they are not confident. They are confused, puzzled, and trying to find a way into the next step. Nothing so far.

As the reader, however, it is essential that they find a clue that is compelling or I will not want to finish the book. I mean, really, there are three bodies. By now Christie would have already pointed you toward the perpetrator though you wouldn’t realize it necessarily. This is a book I read when I am waiting for my next appointment. It is taking me weeks to finish it.

Just stumbled across The Anatomist’s Apprentice by Tessa Harris. On audiobook because I am in to multitasking – again. If I had thought about it, I would not have chosen this book because it is so graphic. Autopsies are that way. I once viewed an autopsy when I worked at a hospital. It is not as fascinating as the books make it out to be. It is smelly and so, so sad. The person whose autopsy I witnessed had ascites. Look it up and you will know why I have a particular perception about autopsies.

Harris captures the goriness of an autopsy – the smells, the inhumanity, the detailed slices and scientific curiosities. The forensic scientist wants to know… period.

This takes me back to Harari’s Sapiens. One point he makes toward the end of the book – yes I am almost finished – is that Europeans have ruled the planet because they accepted that they did not know. They were not more powerful – which is the mythology that we live with in the 21st century. Their curiosity is what led them to other lands. According to Harari, maps were filled – monsters, places you didn’t want to be, but not actual lands. At some point, folks started to accept that they did not know what was beyond their beyond and their maps had lots of blank spaces. Europeans wanted to know what was beyond this beyond. So their motto was “let’s go see what’s there. And discover it! And make it our own!”

What made Europeans exceptional was their unparalleled and insatiable ambition to explore and conquer. Although they might have had the ability, the Romans never attempted to conquer India or Scandinavia, the Persians never attempted to conquer Madagascar or Spain, and the Chinese never attempted to conquer Indonesia or Africa. Most Chinese rulers left even nearby Japan to its own devices. There was nothing peculiar about that. The oddity is that early modern Europeans caught a fever that drove them to sail to distant and completely unknown lands full of alien cultures, take one step on to their beaches, and immediately declare, ‘I claim all these territories for my king!’ from “The Marriage of Science and Empire” in Sapiens

Now maybe that is so. Or maybe that is Harari’s “So.” Confidence. You gotta admire it.